The Memory of Bees
by LollypopGuild
Summary: Sherlock has been retired for 20 years. His days are filled with books and bees and visits from John Watson's daughter... until he receives an unexpected visit from the man himself. They haven't spoken for a long time, so there may be tears before bedtime. Echoes of Sherlolly.
1. Chapter 1

**This is an AU set in the past, as if Sherlock was active during the second world war. Please drop me a line and tell me what you think. **We writers thrive on critique! **If the response is positive I may consider a proper multichap fic set during the war with the whole 1940s kit and caboodle. Kind of a cross between 'The Big Sleep', 'Black Book' and 'Band of Brothers'.**

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><p><strong><span>Scene One - An Unexpected Visitor<span>**

_1970_

The old man did not answer the doorbell right away. He replaced the honey super in the hive and mopped his rugose brow.

Years ago, he'd installed a bell out of doors, running a hotch-potch of salvaged wires and strings through a makeshift system of hooks and pipes, all the way from the front door to the barn.

The May sun beat down, toasting the back of his neck to a deep nut-brown. Beads of sweat soaked into his blue chambray collar as he began the sedate walk back to the house.

Halfway up the gently sloping garden the inevitable bad mood was rising and he paused at the memorial bench. Oh, the evenings they'd spent languishing there under the magnolia, drinking Connemara sixteen year malt, not feeling they had to talk.

He still didn't talk much, but it was a different kind of not talking. Since…

_Since Molly died._

_There, I said it. That's progress for you._

She'd been ripped from him in the autumn of her life, and he often said they didn't have enough time together. They'd realised their mutual devotion too late, and now only the name on a bench remained, to testify she was in his arms at the end.

The flaking patio doors creaked and he slipped out of his outdoor shoes and into those infernal slippers that she always complained about, but secretly loved.

The indoor bell chimed, a proper ding-dong this one, not like the tinkling campanological nightmare of his homemade efforts.

"Almost there. Give an old man a chance. I'm not as young as I used to be, but fortunately for you, I'm still pretty." He made his way through to the front hall, where mail lay unwanted on the sisal mat.

He unbolted the door, weighing up the balance of friend versus foe, and found a young woman in an egg-yolk yellow trouser suit, her fair hair shoved tightly into a bun.

Sherlock shuffled about the tiny, chaotic kitchen fetching coffee, his apiary forgotten for the time being.

"Dad always says you make the worst coffee imaginable."

"He would."

"You're still not talking to each other."

"You'd know better than me, what goes through your father's mind, Temple."

"Black, two sugars. Thanks." Temple took the mug and sniffed the thick liquid suspiciously. "Actually, it's not that bad. We get a lot worse at work. You should come up, show them how it's done."

"That and detective work. Present company accepted."

"He misses you, you know."

"If he misses me that much, he can pick up the phone." Sherlock sipped his own coffee, perching on one of the kitchen stools. Temple was the standing sort, so he didn't press her into the other.

"You'll never change will you?"

"No one's ever expected me to change. Why should I change for him?"

"Because he loves you. He may not know how to show it, but he does."

Sherlock muttered, contemplating the scum on the surface of his drink. "Molly understood. She never asked me to change."

"Molly was special, but you can't let her loss send you back to that place, withdraw, become _him_ again." Temple involuntarily glanced out at the Magnolia tree.

"What do you mean, _'him'_?"

"You know, that cantankerous old git."

"While she was there I felt like I could face being around other people. Without her I… I don't know what to say."

"You should call him."

"Did you come here to check up on me for John, or is there something else?"

Temple put her mug down on the marble counter and fished a small plastic bag out of her pocket. It contained an off-white powder and she held it out at arm's length for him to see, flicking it from underneath with her little finger.

Sherlock frowned and slipped his varifocals back on. "Is that what I think it is?"


	2. Chapter 2

**Scene Two - Lucky Alphonse**

Temple browsed the bells-and-whistles equipment in the study. "So," she said, "it's Dad's birthday soon."

"And that means what, in young people language?" Sherlock adjusted the focus on his favourite microscope.

"It means-"

But he rudely interrupted, "it's Turkish. Ninety-nine per-cent certain."

"How can you tell?"

"I've seen this profile before. Tiny traces of organic matter in the cut. High selenium soil. Almost certainly from a single estate. Timur Osman."

"Thanks. Only you could have done it. Do you mind if I use your 'phone?"

Sherlock tried not to eavesdrop as she dialled her office. "Operation Lucky Alphonse is a go."

He handed her back the evidence bag with the rest of the sample intact and she stashed it in her satchel.

"Anyway, I think you're bitter about getting old. And I think you still blame Dad for getting old, not that he could do anything about it."

"I hadn't planned on getting this far. I always thought I'd die young in a blaze of glory. Either that or I'd find the formula for eternal youth-"

"Which I'm almost ninety-nine percent certain, is not a mixture of nicotine and Irish whiskey."

"You didn't need to come all the way down here. You could have sent a courier." He looked suspicious under the mop of salt and pepper hair. More salt than pepper now. "Or looked it up. I've published a paper on soil variances in narcotics, you know."

She pouted. "Why does it have to be a pretext?"

"Temple, what are you up to?"

"I just wanted to see my uncle Sherlock." Temple gathered up her things and prepared to leave him surrounded by his bottles of chemicals. Permanganate, throwing purple light like a prism. Litmus paper. Then she added, cautiously, "you could have it here, get you socialising again."

"I'm not throwing a party, for John or anyone." He handed her the plastic bag with the rest of the sample intact.

"But you're not averse to seeing him again soon?"

"Temple," he growled, "what have you done?"

"Nothing."

"I know when I'm being conned or volunteered for something against my will. I will not be opening the door to dozens of your father's incompetent friends come the seventh of July, with no choice but to let them in because of some perceived social compliance. Did I say incompetent? I meant incontinent."

"We'll see," she said, knowingly.

"Temps," he warned, but she retained her light, mischievous smile. "Damn you. I'll just have to speak to him myself."

And he headed for the phone.

"No need," Temple cut off his route, "he's waiting in the car."

"What?" Sherlock grasped his messy hair with one fist. "John Watson… here?"


	3. Chapter 3

**Scene Three - A pot of Honey**

"You'd better go and invite him in, because I'm not taking him back to London with me. If you want to get rid of him, you'll have to do it yourself."

"You left him in the car the whole time we were talking?" There was a slight panic in his voice.

"Sherlock," Temple soothed, "I had to be sure you were agreeable to this, before I, you know, brought him in."

"I'm _not_ agreeable to this," Sherlock spoke through his teeth as he helped Temple on with her jacket, turning her collar up aggressively in place of a more manifest anger. He handed her jar of his best honey, although he wasn't sure she deserved it.

"_'Janine's Bees_," she read, "nice."

"Well, I had to do something with it." He walked her to the door. When he opened it he could see that John had brought her dark blue Morris Minor round to the front drive.

"Now," she tiptoed up to give him a hug and a kiss on the cheek, "time for you two to get over yourselves. I have work to do. And no fisticuffs, Okay."

"I can't promise anything."

And then she was walking back to the car and John was getting out of the car and coming toward the house, two feet and a cane crunching on the gravel.

"What happened to you, you old codger?" Sherlock indicated the cane, leaning in the doorway as John approached.

"War wound's playing up again," said John, matter-of-factly, and limped into the cool hallway.

Sherlock tediously held the door open and sighed as he closed it. John shuffled around for a while inspecting things, and then settled into an easy-chair by the unlit hearth. A low sun streamed in through the patio doors. Ivy was getting in at the hinges.

"Look at the state of us." Sherlock sat in his own chair, watching dust motes drift through golden beams of light. "We're getting old."

"Speak for yourself." John picked up a paperback from the side table; "'_Can Bees Remember?'_ Did you write this twaddle? Is this your latest crackpot theory, that _'bees have their own folklore handed down through the generations'_?"

"It's based on a theory of mineral evolution. Are you staying for dinner-"

"It's total poppycock-"

"It's better than your book-"

John held up both hands and his cane, which he had been fingering at the arm of the chair, clattered to the parquet. "What are we doing, Sherlock? Isn't it time we put away this silly feud?"

"You didn't pick up the phone for a year, John. What was I supposed to do?"

"You walked out of Molly's wake. She deserved better than that, and you couldn't even wait-"

"I wasn't… coping well-"

"I thought you were going to do something awful to yourself. I couldn't just stand there and watch you destr-"

"But I _didn't_. Not that it stops you treating me like I did. Treating me like a child." Sherlock realised he was shouting. He stopped and looked at the floor, recovered himself and spoke quietly. "It's not what she would have wanted. I made a promise."

"You don't make promises."

"Anyway, I have a right to be angry with you. I always supported you. I supported your decision to go to war. I was there for you when times were hard. I thought you'd be there for me too."

"Yes, I'm very grateful for all the support, but it wasn't the same thing; my wife died-"

"So did _mine_." Sherlock stared him down, the little red veins in his eyes making the watery grey stand out even more.

"You weren't married to her, Sherlock," John said gently, like the man had forgotten, "she was another man's wife. A man you put in the hospital, I might add."

"That's what this is really about isn't it?" Sherlock dismissed his words with a flick of the hand, "you never believed in Molly and me. You just couldn't accept us. That's what hurt the most; you couldn't believe that her love could save a man like me."

"I had no way of knowing it was real, that you weren't just exploiting her, like it was one of your games."

"Exploiting her?" Sherlock turned pallid.

"You're not the settling kind."

"Oh, stop it. We both know that isn't true. Twenty years, John. I couldn't-"

"No-one can ever be sure with you!"

"_She_ was sure. If anyone was faking it was you."

"What?" John pulled a face.

"Every social call, every day of work, every conversation we had, you were thinking… you…"

All of a sudden John looked very contrite. "I'm sorry. I had no idea you thought that way."

"My loss is just as meaningful as yours." Sherlock looked daggers at him.

"Anyway, she wouldn't have wanted us to fight over this," said John, as a kind of apology.

_No, she wouldn't, _thought Sherlock_. _Molly had always hated fighting. That's why he never told her what he'd done to her husband.


	4. Chapter 4

**Scene 4 - All Hearts are Broken**

On that night, when she finally came to him and he knew she was his, it was raining heavily and she'd knocked loudly, deliberately, on the big front door. He'd been reading by the fire and hadn't been expecting any visitors.

There she stood, a man's waxed coat dripping puddles on the flagstones, her face lined with tears that had already been washed away. He made sure she had a dry towel and a steaming cup of tea in her hand before he let her talk. At first he was cruel, testing her; _I didn't break up your marriage. What do you want me to do about it? People will talk, you coming straight here._

_Let them, _was all she could say, calmly, slowly. He couldn't scare her off and he then knew, that this time it was different. This time she wasn't going back.

So he decided to let her in.

They talked late into the night about past loves and losses, until she yawned and closed her eyes and the fire was dying. He lifted her exhausted form from the easy-chair and carried her upstairs to the guest room. Her lightness shocked him; the last few years had left her stressed and frail.

When he laid her on the bed and turned to go, he was surprised by the pressure of her grasp on his hand.

_Don't go_, she said.

_It wouldn't be right_, he replied.

_That's exactly why I don't want you to go._

And he understood, standing there like an idiot in the dark, turned away but still holding her hand, that this quiet chivalry and respect was exactly why she wanted him. The pain inside was nothing to do with the bullet wound in his heart.

So he had done the thing he told himself he would never do. He turned around, untangled their hands and walked solemnly to the other side of the bed, where he lay down fully clothed. She curled up under his arm, totally spent, and he stroked her damp-darkened hair until she fell asleep.

He stayed awake until the grey light of dawn, keeping watch for imagined enemies.

In the morning proper he silently went about running her a bath. Last night needed no further discussion. He fetched her towels, politely averting his eyes as he handed over some of the clothes that Janine had left behind when she emigrated. Molly had raised an eyebrow at this, asking if they were lovers. _No_, he laughed_, just friends. I bought a house from her; I wasn't sleeping with her. _

When she was clean and refreshed and dressed in one of the floral tea-dresses, they had toast and coffee in the kitchen.

He asked, _would you like to have dinner out tonight? There's a great place in down in Worthing, it's a little bit of a drive, bu _- but he didn't get it all out because she'd already gotten up from the table and was sitting in his lap and snaking her arms around his neck. He was confused. And then to his surprise, they were kissing – a great, hungry, untidy, wrong kiss.

_You're married_, he said, breathing hard, but what they'd done had somehow opened up the floodgates and he couldn't hold back any more. Soon his long, strong hands were at the hem of her dress and then they were pushing it up over her hips and then they were pulling her day-old French knickers down and perching her on the edge of the breakfast table.

Toast and cups skittered to the floor.

Later, during dinner, they talked about David. He didn't _want_ to talk about David, but it was good for Molly, so he listened. As she talked he watched her; the way she moved her hands and picked up her glass, the way she punctuated stories with little snorts. The way she'd set her long golden hair into waves, as was the fashion at the time. The way she wore another woman's dress with poise and dignity.

She was truly beautiful.

She hadn't deserved David. Sherlock tried in vain to conceal his distress when she explained how he'd thrown her to the floor, savagely kicking her until she bled. She'd crawled to the phone and had a colleague take her to the hospital where the life she'd been nurturing for sixteen weeks ebbed away.

But that was not why she left.

She was an educated woman; she should have known better, she _knew_ that. But it had blindsided her; come out of nowhere. Love was blind, and one-sided love was the blindest of all. She told herself, staunchly, that they should try harder; that it was her fault.

Theirs was a love that had survived a war, crossed continents. It was worth fighting for…

No, it wasn't the beating or her loss, it was the way he'd mocked her, that even after all the treatment there were still complications and there would be no more babies.

She'd run to the car, taking nothing but the clothes on her back, and driven through the blinding rain, in the only direction her heart knew.

Sherlock listened to all of this with a hot anger simmering just below the surface and tears threatening to spill over. God help anyone who unleashed the full extent of his fury.

He hoped that she never knew what he did that night after the dinner in Worthing. If she found out she might not look at him the same way, and he couldn't bear that.

He'd left her sleeping at the cottage and travelled to London through the night. He'd gone to David's suburban semi and given him the beating of his life. He wore steel toe-capped boots and clothes that he didn't mind burning afterwards. When David answered the door he put a foot in the gap to stop him slamming it, but he needn't have. It was like David knew he was coming and didn't try to defend himself when Sherlock broke his nose with a precise right hook. Like it was the natural order of things, just as night follows day; Molly leaves and then Holmes comes to kick the ever-loving shit out of you.

In the papers that week, they said that David had been stamped on until he barely clung to life. It also said the police didn't have a lead. If Molly saw the papers, she never said anything, and they never spoke of David again.

After that, they just assumed she would stay. There would be no ring. There would be no vows. They were bound together with the combined knowledge of their adventures together and their acceptance of each other, unique in all the world.

She didn't speak much after that first discourse. It was like she was just tired of life, and Sherlock cursed the monster that made her like that. Dear, sweet Molly from his London days, with her disappearing-and-reappearing lipstick, so full of life. Now she carried the guilt that she hadn't been able to protect her child, and somehow in her head it was always a girl, a nameless girl, so they bought a magnolia tree and planted it in the garden. He was beginning to learn, by proxy, that the pain would never go away.

So he made sure he did something every day to please her. He made love to her in the afternoons. He took her shopping for clothes. He took her to the opera and the ballet; this terrible fool of a man in his great-coat. He took her to formal balls at the Royal Society and introduced her, not as his girlfriend, but by her name. She was successful in her own right; she didn't need to be an addendum to someone else. Let people make up their own minds about their relationship.

He didn't make any demands and he just let her be herself, which was exactly what she needed. All he asked of her was that she didn't ask, under _any _circumstances, what he did in the war, that she didn't ask him to explain why he was the way he was. Her only request was that there be no firearms in the house.

Gradually, over the course of days and weeks, she came back to life. Eventually she ventured out of the house, out of his protective presence and got herself a job at the children's hospital.

One day when she was making dinner, a simple dish of lamb chops with rosemary from the garden, and she was humming a Puccini aria, he realised that she was happy.

_I know you have to make sacrifices to be with me, Molly_, he said as they ate.

But she interrupted what he wanted to explain – _It's not a sacrifice. I've always accepted that I mustn't ask questions. But whatever happens, I get to have you._

They'd lived like that for nineteen years. He with his bees and his lectures and she with her little projects, but they always came together at the end of the day, reading under the magnolia tree or beside the fire when it was cold. They received visits from John and Mary with their baby, behaved like a real couple. Temple came on her own sometimes when she was older. They watched her grow up, and she was the closest thing they had to a child of their own, in an odd kind of way. A different kind of challenge to the ones he was used to, but no less demanding. John always wanted her to be a dancer or an artist, but it was inevitable that she would rebel and follow her Mata Hari mother, got recruited by the security service straight out of university, got herself involved with a young man.

Scandalous.

The way she used to stare up at the sun glimmering through the trees, rapt, had always haunted him. He knew they were kin, this uncontrollable girl and sad, grumpy old Uncle Sherlock, the git.

Then, one day, Molly took to her bed feeling unwell and never got better.

They got a diagnosis. It was rare. It was inoperable. It was terminal.

_It's Okay, you don't have to be strong,_ she said, _I know what's going to happen to me, I'm not stupid._

In a way it would have been better if it was sudden. Then he wouldn't have had to watch the ruthless, inexorable decay and she wouldn't have had to listen to him crying bitterly in the night at the unfairness of it all. Him, a grown man, of all things, biting his knuckles and shaking.

When he was around her, he put a brave face on things. He got a nurse; he was always a coward when it came to bodily things and he selfishly only wanted the best of her. The thought that she might not be there forever was abominable to him; through her he'd learned to love after all, learned that love was a series of decisions. Without her the world would become once again that cold, unforgiving place that had chewed him up and spat him out. In his mind a world without Molly was not just implausible; it was _impossible_.

In the end she was on a lot of morphine. She'd slipped away without warning one night, nestled into his underarm, just like on that first night all those years ago. And he'd kissed goodbye to the woman who'd made his life so beautiful, who'd saved his life so many times and in so many ways, and who was the strongest person he'd ever met, though she never knew it.

Much later, when he was going through some of her things, he found a letter unsent, or maybe it was leaf from her diary, which she'd obviously never meant for him to see. It fluttered down and died on the oak table.

_That first day together was like a watershed. I think he'd been saving up the emotion for a long time. It wasn't that he was afraid he couldn't love; he was just afraid he'd love too much._

_Can you believe he actually said 'may I'? 'May I make love to you, Molly Hooper?' No man has ever said that. He used my maiden name, like none of it mattered and we still young colts just starting in life._

_I can still feel the thrill of those elegant hands on me. _

_I used to feel guilty for all the time I wasted, pining for him back then, back when I was just a flirtation. I thought for so many years that I'd missed the boat. But we hadn't missed the boat; we were just early for this._


	5. Chapter 5

**Scene Five- Fade Away**

"So, it's my birthday soon." John's voice snapped him out of his daydream.

_Here we go_, thought Sherlock.

"The big Seven-oh." John wrapped his mouth around the 'oh', holding on longer than necessary to assuage any embarrassment, any hesitation he might have.

Sherlock nodded, feigning a casual disinterest.

"I'm having a few people round. You're invited. It'll be nice to do something sociable. It's been lonely since Temps moved out. _I've_ been lonely."

Sherlock pressed his lips together thoughtfully before speaking. _Oh, what the hell_. "You… you could have it here if you like."

"Really? Oh, no, you don't have to do that-"

"I insist-"

"Really, I can't impose upon you like that-"

"_Really_, I insist-"

"Well I'm not even sure if I'm actually going to go through with it yet. I'm not sure I want all the hassle, what with the staying out late and my hip and everything."

"You wouldn't need to stay out late, the spare room-" and then Sherlock stopped, frowning, and said, "that daughter of yours is getting awfully sneaky."

"Yes, she told me she needed my professional opinion on something, and then bundled me into the bloody car. The youth of today, no respect."

"Well what do you expect when you name her after a tube station?"

"She did get us talking again."

"If I had to be completely honest," Sherlock said cautiously, "I did miss you."

"I missed you too." John smiled in a charming and uncomplicated way.

"You know, that spare room is empty all the time, and there's nothing tying you to London any more."

"I'll think about it. You are, after all, practically impossible to live with."

"It'd be like old times again."

"Only without the fights."

"I can't promise that," Sherlock smirked.

"Vatican Cameos!" yelled John.

"Matilda Briggs!"replied Sherlock.

When their mirth had subsided and John had sobered up a bit he said, "I'm sorry about Molly."

"It's Okay. It really is."

"No, I didn't say it when it counted, so I'm saying it now. I'm deeply, deeply sorry about Molly. And not in the way you're sorry about losing a friend; she was ever so much more than that. More than I'll ever understand. She made the universe…" He searched for the right word, "better."

_Were his tears from the laughter, or did he finally get it? _Sherlock couldn't look at him any longer so he focussed on the necklace still hanging on the corner of the mantel mirror. Silver and agate. She'd gotten it on that ridiculously ill-considered holiday in Cannes, hung it there the day she was first taken unwell, and he hadn't the heart to remove it. As long as it was there, it was like she'd just stepped out of the room, leaving him in a state of perpetual sanguine expectation. "She would be the first to tell you, nothing lasts forever," he said thoughtfully.

"I'm glad she got what she always wanted," said John, wiping an eye with the back of his hand.

"Will you write about her, John. In your next book, I mean. Whenever I try to explain her to people she just comes out all two-dimensional."

"I'll certainly try to do her justice."

"You can't have a book about the great Sherlock Holmes without the woman who mattered the most."

John stayed for dinner and afterwards Sherlock drove him to the station in his 2CV. They hugged a great big, thumping-on-the-back bear hug, and said their goodbyes. But it wasn't for long because they held the Seventieth birthday party in the cottage in the Sussex downs and afterwards John gave up and moved back in, and it was like old times again, only without the fights.

Well, maybe a few.

Temple always joked, in her lectures on their legendary work, that old soldiers and spies never die, they simply fade away. And decades later, when Temple herself was gone, there was no-one left to remember them but the bees.


End file.
